Volume One, Chapter Eighty-Nine: Ambushed

At the summit of the transmission dais, wreathed in seven-colored Brahmic radiance, Tu Zhe and his party stood taking leave of the Jin brothers, the Shudra yaksha brethren, the Old Emperor, Yueyi, the Four Heavenly Kings, and the rest.

The Jin brothers were weeping like children, sobbing incessantly like two old dames.

The Shudra brothers, Re Yejialuo, and the others all earnestly hoped the little sovereign would return soon.

Yueyi stared at Tu Zhe without blinking, and in her heart the melody of that younger sister echoed on and on.

As for the Old Emperor, he muttered inwardly, Damn that shameless woman. Maybe your lousy little brother will run into some abyss or other halfway there and kick the bucket. Let me see whether you’ll go mourn yourself to death for him.

And Huzhina... how should one put it? Little Hu’s feelings were plain enough to anyone.

Master Miaojiang Tian personally activated the transmission array. A blaze of seven-colored light shot skyward, space quivered in an instant, and an invisible passage swallowed Tu Zhe and his party whole.

They were gone. For the moment, the Old Emperor could breathe easy. But breathing easy did not mean idleness. As a Heavenly Lord, doing nothing was disgraceful, was it not?

The instant Tu Zhe and the others vanished, Huzhina’s expression went pale, then shifted again and again. All that Tu Zhe had brought into his life since birth—just like that, nothing more? Just like that, everything smooth and harmonious, all prettified away?

The problem was that the one prettified away was me!

One can imagine all of Little Hu’s later doings, and look forward to him stirring up trouble and making a new pattern for his life.

On this farewell, Old Rahu did not come; Mo Boxun and Mou Xiululuo were absent as well. But that did not mean they were unconcerned.

Old Rahu, Mo Boxun, and Mou Xiululuo had their divine consciousness sweeping wantonly across the mountain peak of the Four Heavenly Kings’ Heaven, and anyone with even a little attainment would have been able to sense it.

That is to say, every detail of the transmission was under the three mighty ones’ close surveillance. Not to mention that the Old Emperor truly had not made any mischief— even if he had, how could he have escaped the monitoring of three such powers?

The hardest to bear, of course, was the Heavenly Consort Yueyi. But Tu Zhe had already gone, so let the number one beauty of the three realms first savor the memory of that someone on the ridge.

From the Four Heavenly Kings’ Heaven to the other end of the transmission array, in Taichang Huangzeng Heaven, the configured coordinates should place it near the midpoint between Kui, the first of the Western Seven Mansions among the Twenty-Eight Lodges of the Northern Dipper, and Bi, the seventh of the Northern Seven Mansions. This region lies within the domain of Taichang Huangzeng Heaven of the Thirty-Two Heavens of the Northern Dipper. If interested, readers may consult the appendix, Thirty-Two Heavens of the Northern Dipper.

Even if it were merely the region between Kui and Bi, it would still be boundless and vast. How many thousands of miles it stretched in length and breadth, no one truly knew. To the Black Tortoise of the North and the White Tiger of the West, it was simply a desolate wilderness no one cared to look upon. So let whoever wanted to manage it manage it; I have no interest in doing so.

Tu Zhe and his party were not lonely within the transmission channel, either.

With the transmission array set to its endpoint coordinates, a journey of only a few dozen breaths at the shortest, or several hours at the longest, was rather pleasant.

Although countless star domains rushed past before their eyes, too fast to make out anything, it was only a few hours after all. For heavenly beings whose lifespans spanned thousands or even tens of thousands of years, such brief solitude meant nothing. Moreover, after Tu Zhe’s realm and strength rose to that of a God-King, his lifespan was extended indefinitely; Gougou and the three demon maidens stood in the same realm, and for this group, a few hours were hardly more than a nap.

Do not think heavenly beings were of such refined quality. Ever since the female hound and the three demon maidens gathered together, there had been no peace. The female hound fought the demon maidens, losing only in words, never in hand, and though they did not necessarily truly come to blows, pointing, stamping, and rolling their eyes was inevitable.

The three demon maidens, constrained by Tu Zhe and unable to strip the hound bare, still spoke with barbs between the lines, and their gift of tongues was formidable indeed. Seeing that the hound suffered a loss but was not truly infuriated, Tu Zhe merely turned a blind eye and pretended not to see.

As they say, within the transmission channel, the female hound and the three demon maidens, bored beyond endurance, began squabbling again. The hound used every means at her disposal to make the demon maidens admit her licentious and unruly nature, while the three demon maidens looked down on the hound for not even being able to take human form, so that no matter how wanton she wished to be, she could not truly become wanton.

Listening to this, Tu Zhe’s mind stirred. When Mou Xiululuo finished his secluded cultivation in Yemo Heaven, he had roughly told Tu Zhe about the hound’s condition. There was one point Tu Zhe found very strange, and Mou Xiululuo could not explain why.

That was that the hound always appeared in her true form. As for changing into human shape, she neither disdained it nor knew how. In truth, it was not that she did not know how; rather, she could not remember the divine power for transformation. Tu Zhe tried to teach her, but the hound said she could transform into nothing at all.

Other divine arts she had learned in the past could still more or less be used, though their power was greatly diminished; only this transformation into human form was impossible.

What was that supposed to mean?

Tu Zhe decided that once he returned from the Northern Dipper heavens, he must go to the Mountain of Zhejialuo and investigate it thoroughly.

Several hours passed. Tu Zhe estimated that they were not far from the region between Kui and Bi in the Daoist Northern Dipper, but at that very moment, a sense of danger came over him for no apparent reason.

Since his divine consciousness absorbed the soul power of the Celestial Soul Crystal, he had felt himself possess many inconceivable abilities, one of them being premonition of danger.

Though he did not know what this sudden peril was, within a transmission array, what one feared most was the channel being shattered without warning. Once that happened, those inside would face unimaginable danger.

For instance, the instant the channel ruptured, they might be blown to fragments or even dust by the splintering of space-time.

Even if they escaped that calamity, they might emerge in a barbaric star domain, or even in an absolute void of space-time with not a single star.

And even if, by great fortune, they escaped that as well, there was no guarantee they would not encounter the omnipresent spatial storms that filled the starry expanse. Within such storms, one might, at best, emerge covered in wounds; at worst, one would be torn to pieces. Even if your body were so formidable as to be indestructible as adamantine, you might still drift forever within the spatial storm, wandering the dark vacuum with no coordinates and no sense of direction, carried aimlessly by the current until utter extinction.

Tu Zhe’s scalp tingled. This foreboding of danger made him decide in an instant to use his divine consciousness to open the Sumeru ring and draw in Gougou, the three demon maidens, and the demon-dragon guards.

At that moment, Gougou and the three demon maidens were still bickering with great relish, utterly unaware of the impending crisis. Tu Zhe’s divine consciousness had enveloped the three demon maidens and the demon-dragon guards, and was about to envelop Gougou as well, but just then Gougou, who had been pressed close to Trixina, was angered by a single remark. She turned away from Trixina, and his divine consciousness swept past her side.

Tu Zhe was shocked. He roared at Trixina, Hold on to the hound!

The instant his divine consciousness enveloped the three demon maidens, they also sensed something was wrong, but it was already too late.

With a thunderous blast, the channel was shattered by an attack from beyond the heavens. As space-time fragments sprayed in all directions, the Lust Maiden Lati, the Greed Maiden Luojia, the demon-dragon guards, and half of Trixina’s body had already entered the ring. Trixina had clearly heard Tu Zhe’s roar and immediately reached out to seize the hound.

But Tu Zhe clearly saw Trixina hesitate ever so slightly in that instant, and her fingers just brushed past the hound’s little paw without catching it.

Tu Zhe flew into a rage. His hair stood on end; violent fury roared through his body. He kicked Trixina into the Sumeru ring and howled, Hound!

Then he charged toward Gougou.

And at that very moment, Gougou was struck by a torrent of space-time fragments and exploded apart. She did not even have time to cry out before she was hurled, together with a powerful shockwave, into the dark vacuum.